This is Part B of the director’s commentary on Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 3. (A | B | C | D | E)

Maria enters in the middle of Scene 3, after the festive trio have been making some noise via songs and such.

Maria: What a caterwauling do you keep here? If my Lady have not call’d up her Steward Malvolio, and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me.

Toby replies partly in prose, partly in song:

Toby: My Lady’s a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio’s a Peg-a-Ramsey, and Three Merry men be we. Am not I consanguinious? Am I not of her blood: tilly vally. Lady, There dwelt a man in Babylon, Lady, Lady.

Toby’s reply might be taken to be a punny though drunken “tilly vally” (”fiddlesticks” nonsensical) retort, where, he “reasons” if he’s a “Caterwaulian,” his “consanguinious” (blood-related) cousin must be a “Cataian”. If the three must be quiet, then they might as well be plotting politicians, and if Malvolio’s the person who’d tell them off, then he’s the Peg-a-Ramsey spy… And the festive trio converge to just one person, and thus there’s just three parties–the Cataian Lady, the politician, and the Peg-a-Ramsey.

Crystal Shakespeare interprets Toby’s reply to have some “sense” to it: Cataian - a scoundrel or spy from the Cathays (an area, “roughly” known as China), politicians (players of intrigue), and Peg-a-ramsey (song samples: here and here), referring to the ballad of a spying wife. On giving a geographic interpretation to Cathays — incidentally, this article by Y.Z. Chang has more info on the Elizabethans’ perception of the Cataian or Cathayans (Incidentally, it was published in 1936, a year before the Nanjing Massacre).

Both Arden and the Variorum suggest using the tune of Greensleeves for “There dwelt a man in Babylon…” — for comic effect (and, since we’re not doing a period production, per se), perhaps have a bit of a “Broadway ring” in the ending, “Lady, Lady.”

Toby’s drunken imagination seems to be irking Feste, “beshrewing him,” in that Toby seems a better fool than he, now.

Feste: Beshrew me, the knight’s in admirable fooling.

Andrew, being Andrew, seems eager to claim credit for fool:

Andrew: Aye, he do’s well enough if he be dispos’d, and so do I too: he does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.

Toby bursts into anthem:

Toby: O the twelfth day of December.

Maria’s like, “Oh for the love of god, SHUT UP!”

Maria: For the love o’God, peace.

And then Malvolio enters. Traditionally, he’s dressed in PJ’s, perhaps even with a nightcap. A Steward’s traditional role is to keep order in the house, so, in a way, he’s just doing his duty, but he’s Malvolio, and there’s plenty of repressed angst he’s just got to let out:

Malvolio: My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like Tinkers at this time of night?

At this point, Toby throws the apple at Malvolio, who ducks and continues dissing them:

Malvolio: Do ye make an Alehouse of my Lady’s house, that ye squeak out your Coziers’ Catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?

Toby knows that the trio hasn’t been exactly in-tune or even singing anything worth a sixpence, but, at least they kept in time. He hiccups and sneezes, in time, too!:

Toby:
We did keep time, sir, in our Catches.
(He hiccups and sneezes)
Sneck up!

Malvolio first tries to reason with Toby, in his own way, saying that Toby-sans-clamor is welcome, but the current Toby, however, must be “separated from misdemeanors”:

Malvolio: Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My Lady bade me tell you, that though she harbors you as her kinsman, she’s nothing ally’d to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your misdemeanors, you are welcome to the house: if not, an’ it would please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you farewell.

Toby, ever the self-asserting individualist, even when drunk, declares (in song!):

Toby: Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone. (Hiccup!)

Toby and Feste continue to banter in song, “singing about Malvolio behind his back.” Maria doesn’t join their singsong, nor does Malvolio, who takes their song-lyrics literally.

Maria: Nay, good Sir Toby.
Feste: His eyes do shew his days are almost done.
Malvolio: Is’t even so?
Toby: But I will never die.
Feste: Sir Toby there you lie.
Malvolio: This is much credit to you.
Toby: Shall I bid him go.
Feste: What and if you do?
Toby: Shall I bid him go, and spare not?
Feste: O no, no, no, no, you dare not.

On Feste’s support, Toby starts railing about Malvolio’s presumed “holier-than-thou” attitude:

Toby: Out o’tune, sir, ye lie: art any more than a Stewart? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more Cakes and Ale?

Feste, makes his leave, perhaps delivering his line with a wishy-washy commitment:

Feste: Yes, by Saint Anne, and Ginger shall be hot i’the mouth too.

Tags: Andrew, feste, Maria, Toby